Remembering the old apartment: Mom

You walk into a rectangular hallway and from there you go straight into the kitchen or the living room/bedroom on the right.

A small, white table with two chairs is in the hallway. The table is on the right side.

You could fold it, the white, small table. I remember it.

It was standing like this and you could fold it. It had X-shaped legs and two small plates on top. And two white chairs that you could also fold, with bars across.

There was also a coat rack that was on the round wall tapestry. There were about six, seven knobs on the coat rack.

The floor was covered with a carpet. The carpet had a pattern.

There were three doors leading to other rooms from that hallway: to the bathroom, the kitchen and the bedroom.

The door to the bathroom was on the left.

And to the living room on the right. Straight to the front wall and then right. And the kitchen was on the left.

The bedroom was a large room, shaped like a rectangle. Straight ahead was the bunk bed, orange with white. And on the right a three-seater sofa, beige with brown, and a two-seater sofa with an armchair and a coffee table. And on the other wall was a large bookcase, beige with brown. It matched the furniture.

The sofa was brown with stripes in the middle.

You could convert it into a bed, a queen-size bed. But you would have to move everything towards the bookcase.

There were windows along the whole wall on the right.

With long curtains.

The bunk beds were L-shaped. The bottom one was Aida’s, the top one Dana’s.

The living room was square shaped. Three meters by three meters. It had a small opening into the kitchen.

On the right wall were shelves with metal brackets and white shelves, and this is where the big TV was. In the middle was a round table with four chairs. And around it was a corner sofa with five seats.

The table was right in front of it. I always had to move that one chair, so that I could push the table closer to the sofa.

Four chairs.

There was also a small kid’s table. Do you remember? The red one?

It was right by the balcony entrance.

To the left was a small opening for the kitchen. Peach color. There was a fridge, the top and bottom cabinets, and a stove.

The sink was in the corner.

The space was too small.

The fridge was pushed right next to the sink, the sink pushed into the wall. And on the left was the stove with cabinets right above it. It was all so tightly pushed together that I was the only person who could squeeze in there to wash the dishes. Between those cabinets.

My grandmother, mother and mother in law could never squeeze in that space to do the dishes. That’s how tiny the space was.

I had to do the dishes with a tilted head like this, do you remember? I was washing the dishes like this. The whole time. Eleven years.

And you father was in the corner, watching TV. Yes, your father was in the corner, watching TV.

Nothing else could fit in there.

On that wall between the fridge and the sofa was a furnace that exploded. Later on, we had radiators. The furnace was shaped like a rhomboid. It had six sides. And it had bars. It was an oil furnace and then it exploded. Luckily after that, we had radiators and no more troubles with the furnace.

The radiators were exactly underneath the windows. Squeezed in between the windows and our sofa.